Monday, November 08, 2010

Not the end of babies for everyone as we know them, but just for our little family of four. But first things first. The news of the week: Please don't let me be jinxing myself but I think Sabrina is potty trained! Basically on her second birthday she began insisting on underwear like her big sister, had one accident and has been happily an underwear wearer since. We even tried underwear this weekend while we were out and about, and it worked. IT WORKED!

Obviously, her sleep has gone to the crapper (heh). But I'll take it. I think it'll all even out soon. And we will have a good sleeper who's also a fully toilet-trained kid. !!!

Also, a great music lover. Taken on her 2nd birthday with her new xylophone.

And then, then I won't have any babies! I will be done with babies. No more babies. It makes me catch my breath a little even now to think the baby-making phase of our family is over and the child-rearing phase is in full swing for the next 14-16 years, and then the young-adult support phase, and then! But this, I think, is a lesson of pregnancy that I absorbed very early on-- things change. You're not pregnant, then you are, and if all goes well you stay pregnant but you don't stay the same, because every day your body is changing, until the Giant Change of Childbirth where a person (or people!) emerge from you, organs involute and rearrange, skin shifts, hair falls. Not to mention the changes of the heart and mind. Oh it all never stops changing. So why would I think I'd be in baby-making land forever? It seems so abrupt to leave, I suppose, but also it makes sense. We're ready to keep moving. And even if we were not ready, not at all, wanting to carry around another little passenger and go through the extraordinary challenge of childbirth and stay up for hundreds more sleepless nights, even if we yearned for it, we know even more deeply that for our family, this is our circle. A circle of four to grow into.

So this is the end of babies. But it's only the beginning of reading and writing and counting and storytelling, climbing and camping and baking. The seeds have sprouted, the plants are growing, the metaphor is tired. And so am I, but not for long. Because I see the day when sleeping and pottying are issues of the past, when this time will be those days we survived the tantrums and food throwing, public potty accidents and inopportune naps. So bittersweet to say goodbye to these original challenges that strengthened my parenting soul. To challenges I know now that I can meet. And to say 'welcome' to the uncertainty of new challenges, but also to the beauty and wonder of my girls as they grow.